


Faces in the Water

by ChocoChipBiscuit



Category: Dishonored (Video Games)
Genre: Low Chaos (Dishonored), M/M, Pre-Relationship
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-06
Updated: 2019-09-06
Packaged: 2020-10-11 10:42:53
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,649
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20544833
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ChocoChipBiscuit/pseuds/ChocoChipBiscuit
Summary: Samuel's used to waiting. He's willing to wait a little more.





	Faces in the Water

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Rhovanel](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Rhovanel/gifts).

> This fic is Jessamine-critical and contains mentions of Samuel's wife.
> 
> Many thanks to [Hobbitdragon](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Hobbitdragon) for betaing and indulging my semi-coherent babbling about complicated grief and my frustrations with how Jessamine is depicted in the canon. :)

_If the dead are watching,_  
_I want them to see us writing, dancing, singing, painting_  
_I want them to see that we still reach out to each other_

\- Richard Siken

. . .

Samuel waits in the growing dark, the last grays of the sky fading to charcoal and black. They don’t see stars much, these days; they’re choked out by the smoke of the factories or drowned in the singing hum of electric lights. He still remembers where they are, though—the familiar shapes and constellations. Sailor’s friends, a way of tracking course across the sea.

Sitting in the boat, the river slapping the sides in gentle rhythm, he wonders where the stars are steering now. Samuel’s too old for faith in institutions, in nobility or birthright, in all the lies that people make to justify who stays in power. Even in the golden Empress Jessamine, under whose benevolent rule the yawning chasm between rich and poor grew ever wider, under whose maternal care the daughters of other mothers were transported for work and ended up in places like the Golden Cat or thrown into the river.

The Loyalists offer hope, but ‘hope’ is a ten-year-old child and the clarity of succession.

So Samuel waits, marking time by penciling a new design on the wooden block he’s chosen. He chooses sailors’ symbols: a compass for wayfinding, a wheel to steer true, and an anchor for the journey’s end.

As an afterthought, he marks a bowl on the end. Might as well make it a spoon.

. . .

Samuel waits on the dock before each mission, carving wood by the fading light as the herons croak in search of prey. Sandpipers stab for crabs along the shoreline, and Samuel wishes them luck on their hunt. The river rarely gives gifts.

The wood takes shape in his hands with the familiarity of ritual. The pine is smooth in his hands, the missing fingers on his glove letting him feel the grain with a lover’s touch. He imagines it's a little like the bone charms he's seen before, the blood-washed core of leviathans. He has seen their power and their doom, and politely ignores the ones that Corvo hangs around his neck on a leather cord or tucks into the bandages of old wounds. Whether witchcraft or older magic, maybe they’re just a primal truth writ solid: everything comes down to blood and bone.

He can only shape the power of the trees on the river, the life-pulse of water bound in it like ribbons. It is as much him as anything carved of flesh.

Samuel’s thumb holds firm on the back of the blade, a gentle push that results in a long, smooth curl of shaved wood. He uses a shorter stroke to pare away the face of the compass, picking out the details of the face so they emerge from the wood.

He is starting to have faith, perhaps.

It may be odd to believe an assassin to have integrity, but Samuel knows the needle of his heart is true.

. . .

Samuel waits for Corvo after each mission, watching the man’s face grow more shadowed even as the nightmares written on his skin slowly fade. Trauma carries a weight that’s more than physical; Corvo doesn’t sleep well.

So Samuel offers him weak tea when they return, the third steeping of the leaves after the nobles had their fill. Tea is dear in Dunwall these days, the trade withered with news of the plague. Samuel usually adds a scrape of honey to sweeten it, but most important is that it’s made by his own hands, something small he can offer a man who shies away from touch.

And—if not most important, then surely second-most—Corvo cannot wear his mask to drink, has to drink sunlight with his tea and steep himself with warmth. The mask is meant to evoke the fear of death, but Samuel has washed bodies and the dead hold no terror. The dead feel no pain, but he can see it gripping Corvo every time.

Samuel doesn’t talk much, usually. Words mean nothing to the dead, to his wife long-buried or friends longer gone. His words mean nothing to the river or the faces in the water.

But Corvo is even quieter than he is, a hollow _want_ without end, and Samuel starts talking to bridge that gap. Words are for the living, those left behind when the pyre licks across the body or the waters swallow them whole.

So Samuel talks. About nothing. About everything. About the wheel taking shape beneath his knife, about the planned design of this wooden spoon. About the way the riverweed sways like mermaid’s hair in the current, about Rivka’s soups and his favorite jam made with figs and fennel. About the navigation of birds and sailors, by compass and constellations, sunrise and sunset and whatever ley lines mark the path of migration.

Corvo listens. Breathes. Closes his eyes, still sitting upright and swaying. As if he can make himself one with the wet stone and earth, the vegetal rot and mineral tang of the river.

It is not a true sleep, but it is the best that Samuel can offer.

. . .

Samuel drops wooden shavings into the water, the last remnants of everything not-anchor drifting away in swirls and eddies. He watches the water until it’s clear, and keeps watching until faces appear in the periphery, conjured of shadow and riverweed. He watches, waiting. Waiting.

The river is full of strange and magical things, but hoards its secrets like a miser hoarding pearls. He has seen lights and faces in the water, corpses washed to shore and pieces of glass and bone worn into smooth charms by nature’s own craft.

This, too, is a gift.

The shadows drift into a billow of dark hair, light glittering to cast a face more familiar and dear to him than his own. His wife stares back from the water, with her sharp nose and dancing eyes. His fingers curl, aching to touch, but it would only ripple her away to nothing.

“Am I foolish, then?”

Rivka rolls her eyes, throwing her hands up and giving him an exasperated smile. She opens her mouth, and no words come out, not even bubbles, but he can mirror the shape of her mouth with his own and imagine her saying _We don’t give blessings for the dead, Samuel_ as she taps her chin with frustration. She shrugs, blowing him a kiss and flapping her hands in a shooing motion, finger making a circle as if to tell him to turn around—

Her face disappears, abruptly replaced with Corvo’s own. The man is more than quiet, he is _silent_. The river’s low lap of constant motion makes more noise than he does.

“Is it that time already?” Samuel asks, knees groaning as he pushes himself upright.

Corvo nods, placing the mask on his face. Swallowed up—_letting_ himself be swallowed up—by his role in all this as surely as Samuel.

“Well. Let’s get going.”

. . .

Samuel’s been waiting for so long, but isn’t prepared for the startled joy of Corvo rescuing the child-empress.

Emily is a gift and a blessing, as is seeing the mask drop from Corvo’s face for one brief and shining moment as he swings his girl into his arms. Samuel smiles, turning away so as not to intrude on their reunion. Emily talks, the same way that Samuel does—whether or not she's naturally garrulous, she too sees the shape of her father’s grief and tries to soften it through words.

Samuel finds himself singing shanties, teaching her the cadence so she can add her own verses. They startle a kingfisher out of hiding, little more than a blur of blue that makes Emily cry out with delight. She sings all the way back to the Hound Pits, and even Corvo joins in with a hum that’s more breath than tune.

Emily scampers off the boat, heedless of the arm that Corvo tries to offer, and Samuel lets out a rasping laugh that turns into a cough.

“I’m glad we brought her back.”

Corvo gives a wary smile, eyes sunk deep with the enormity of hope, the fear and terror of it. He gives a brief nod, then rummages in his coat. He pulls out a small bundle, tossing it to Samuel. Samuel catches out of reflex rather than conscious thought.

“For you,” Corvo says, voice flaked with rust. He turns his back quickly, scurrying off the boat even faster than Emily.

Bemused, Samuel examines his bundle. His fingers tell him it’s soft leather, supple and smooth, and then as he unfolds it his eyes reveal that these are new gloves, warm and intact.

He does not know where Corvo got these, whether he purchased them from some market stall or simply stole them on one of his missions—Samuel hopes these gloves didn’t come off a dead man, though he won’t judge if they did—but his eyes fill with salt and water as he carefully tries them on.

They fit perfectly.

Samuel blinks. Swallows.

Then he picks up the one specialty knife he uses, a simple hook knife for shaping the bowl of his carving. Most of his cuts he can do with a simple pocket knife, and he can even make the bowl if he has too, but the hook knife is a small luxury that he allows himself.

_A good spoon inevitably leads to forking_, Rivka whispers in his ear, a soft puff of breath and memory. He’d laugh if it weren’t madness, if it weren’t the sheer absurdity of a man his age going _courting_, but these spoons have a tradition.

He weighs the knife in his hand, considering.

Then he allows himself to pick up the unfinished decorative spoon—no, he can admit to what it is, an unfinished _lovespoon_—and starts working.


End file.
